-Caveat Lector-
Bush Aims To Recruit 1 in 24 Americans
As Citizen Spies/Informants
By Ritt Goldstein
SMH.com
7-15-2
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of
United States citizens as
domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil
liberties groups.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or
TIPS, means the US
will have a higher percentage of citizen informants
than the former East
Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The
program would use
a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report
"suspicious activity".
Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with
the passage earlier
this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for
abusive, large-scale
investigations of US citizens.
As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being pursued as part
of the so-called war
against terrorism. It is a Department of Justice
project.
Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network,
TIPS volunteers are
being recruited primarily from among those whose work
provides access to
homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter
carriers, utility employees,
truck drivers and train conductors are among those
named as targeted
recruits.
A pilot program, described on the government Web site
www.citizencorps.gov, is scheduled to start next month
in 10 cities, with 1
million informants participating in the first stage.
Assuming the program is
initiated in the 10 largest US cities, that will be 1
million informants for a
total population of almost 24 million, or one in 24
people.
Historically, informant systems have been the tools of
non-democratic
states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard
University's Project on
Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is
problematic, with some
informants having embellished the truth, and others
suspected of having
fabricated their reports.
Present Justice Department procedures mean that
informant reports will
enter databases for future reference and/or action. The
information will
then be broadly available within the department,
related agencies and local
police forces. The targeted individual will remain
unaware of the existence
of the report and of its contents.
The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to
be searched
without that person being informed that a search was
ever performed, or of
any surveillance devices that were implanted.
At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-
ordinated by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was given
sweeping new
powers, including internment, as part of the Reagan
Administration's
national security initiatives. Many key figures of the
Reagan era are part of
the Bush Administration.
The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in
secret, was
another Reagan national security initiative.
-- Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a
former leader in the
movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has
lived in Sweden
since 1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he
was the victim of
life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his
accountability efforts. His
application has been supported by the European
Parliament, five of
Sweden's seven big political parties, clergy, and
Amnesty and other rights
groups.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/14/1026185141232.html
MainPage
http://www.rense.com
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator."
-GW Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on
12/18/2000.
As broadcast on CNN and available in transcript on their website
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html
Steve Wingate, Webmaster
ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES
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